Pears vs oranges? Or why criteria matter

The argument sometimes goes like this: “Names aren’t important.” “Call it xyz and be done with it.” “The important thing is research and a cure”.

Sounds reasonable. After all, sick and suffering people just want a cure, treatment, something to help, and rightly so. And names seem like such a silly thing to even care about in the bigger picture. Why does it even matter?

But research starts with something. It starts with people. People who have a certain illness. You can’t research an illness without people who have that particular illness.

But what illness? First you have to define the illness. That’s where criteria come in. If you do a research study on 10 people with 10 different illnesses, it’s like doing a study on 10 different fruits.

What meaningful result will you get? That they are all fruits? But we already know that. And what applies to a pear may not necessarily apply to an orange and vice versa. So then we are back to square one.

We have seen the results of this approach of studying all fruits together for decades. The results are not good. Inconclusive. Contradictory Cannot be replicated. We end up stuck, confused. Comparing like with like is crucial. It’s how we make real progress toward a treatment, a cure.

This is why criteria are important. They help us compare like with like. Criteria are the building block of research, step one. How you pick people for a research study in the first place.

It’s not so much the name, but which criteria that name is attached to. Illness names don’t exist by themselves. They are always attached to criteria. Just like the word pear attaches to a meaning. And that meaning is different from an orange. Criteria are the meaning behind names.

Selecting patients to study using criteria that specify the illness you’re studying is crucial. So you know you’re studying 10 pears, as opposed to 6 pears and 4 oranges.

Because having 4 oranges in with 6 pears will cause a lot of confusion if you’re trying to figure out something about pears. You will skew the results. When you study pears you need to study only pears. And the same applies to oranges or any other fruit.

That’s why sorting pears from oranges and other kinds of fruit really matters for research. A lot. In fact, it’s the most important thing. And without this crucial sorting, there is no meaningful research and sadly no cure. Whether a pear, an orange, or a fig, everyone deserve proper study, proper research, treatments and a cure. Criteria matter.